


Mysteries

by WanderingTheRailroads



Category: Hyouka & Kotenbu Series
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Awkwardness, Baby, Career, Dating, Death, Death from Old Age, Driving, Exploration, F/M, Feels, Funeral, Futurefic, Gen, Humor, Marriage, Motherhood, Mysteries, Old Age, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Sex, Sexual Content, Wedding, friends - Freeform, ooc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 06:44:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1734992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingTheRailroads/pseuds/WanderingTheRailroads
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all the mysteries are solved, she remains insatiably curious.</p><p>5 scenes from the lives of Chitanda Eru and Oreki Houtarou.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mysteries

1) "Oreki-san, I'm curious! What's it like to fall in love?"

 

In the spring after Mayaka and Satoshi have dragged up and killed their unresolved gremlins, Oreki watches as they fall, stumbling and tumbling into an awkward sort-of-but-not-quite-romance. It's so utterly inelegant that he would rather ignore them altogether, if not for the fact that they're both his good friends and deserve acknowledgement at least. So Oreki, energy-saving policy in mind, does the bare minimum required to placate them. Mayaka, especially. God knows the amount of energy wasted if he were to get into an argument with her. Far better to smile and wish them well, he muses. 

They meet on a sunny day in the park, and Oreki looks on bemused as Satoshi tries to hold Mayaka’s hand and gets kicked for his efforts. "Congratulations, Satoshi, Mayaka."

 

"Gee, thanks buddy." Satoshi enunciates in his usual nonchalant tone of voice. Mayaka just blushes and mutters something incomprehensible, hitting Satoshi on the arm. Suddenly, Satoshi breaks free and saunters over to where Oreki stands, poking him in the side. Oreki barely even reacts to the poke, but what Satoshi whispers to him immediately after causes Oreki to turn an uncharacteristically bright shade of pink. "What about you and Chitanda-chan?" 

 

Oreki doesn’t reply, even after Satoshi repeatedly eggs him on and Mayaka yells at Satoshi to quit asking the lazy bum who will never bother to give an answer, because his head is filled with recollections of the day Chitanda stood beneath the shower of cherry blossoms, of her dazzling smile and those unspoken words he couldn’t bring to the surface.

  _How about…if I helped you out with your business?_

He watches Mayaka and Satoshi butcher romance, and sighs inwardly, his own feelings a mystery. But he isn't the only one worrying.

 

On a mid-spring day, Oreki is cycling home after an errand, when he spots a familiar figure in the distance. As he draws closer, he realizes that amidst the long grass Chitanda is standing stock still, her arms clasped to her chest and eyes scrunched tight. For a moment, Oreki contemplates leaving her be, but his _curiosity_ –it’s the fault of one Chitanda Eru for infecting him with that virus- gets the better of him, and he parks his bicycle by the roadside.

 

“Um…Chitanda-chan? Are you alright?” Oreki calls out, drawing up behind Chitanda and tapping her shoulder lightly. She fails to respond, initially. Somewhat annoyed yet relieved that no further energy will be wasted, he decides to leave and starts walking away, when he feels a tug on his shirt.

“Oreki-san…” Chitanda’s voice rings softly in his ears, a siren calling him to the rocks where he will run aground. Reluctantly, Oreki turns around, knowing exactly what he’ll see: large indigo eyes, gleaming with the flame of inquisitiveness.

 

“Oreki-san, I’m curious.” What he doesn’t expect, though, is how his heart begins to race when Chitanda practically violates his personal space, their faces merely inches apart. What he doesn’t expect is Chitanda’s uncharacteristically hesitant words, and the luminescent red that colors her cheeks as she speaks. “I’m…I’m curious about what it means to be falling in love. I mean…I mean Satoshi-kun and Mayaka-chan are dating now and everything, so I’ve been wondering about…I’ve been having these weird feelings lately, and I don’t understand why…”

 

In his mind, the puzzle pieces are piling up, and he suddenly remembers all the furtive glances Chitanda has given him lately when she thinks he’s not looking, and all the times she has blushed in response to something he did or said, and the rush of emotions he felt when he saw her during the Doll Festival. Oreki finds himself questioning his entire worldview of energy-saving when Chitanda comes into the picture, so maybe…just maybe, investigating this won’t be such a waste of energy after all, he decides.

 

“Yeah, me too. I’ve been thinking about it too.” he admits sheepishly, not daring to look her in the eye for fear of being overwhelmed by her enthusiastic glow.

Chitanda grabs both his wrists excitedly, exclaiming “Really?? Can we investigate this?”

“Sure.” For once, he feels no reluctance to assist her in deciphering a mystery.

 

A month later, Oreki is no closer to solving the case, even after they’re been on dates to watch movies and have dinner together and walk home after school. How do you describe something so intangible? Flutters? Butterflies in the stomach? Those cliché expressions don’t hold any weight.

 

A month and a half later, they find the solution, on a rainy day after school. The downpour catches them unaware, suddenly falling in a great torrent, and as Chitanda grabs his hand and they run for the nearest shelter, Oreki comes to a realization: Falling in love is like solving a mystery, or a puzzle. You don’t realize how everything fits together, until you step back and observe and think it through, and then everything falls into place.

 

Later, as they take shelter beneath a tin-roofed bus stop, he sets the final puzzle piece into its rightful position. There are no fireworks or spectacular kisses or falling flower petals, just a boy and a girl with drenched school uniforms, holding hands and huddling together for warmth.

 

Two days later, Mayaka receives the news and accosts them, gushing over Chitanda but directing a rather unsubtle death glare at Oreki, as though saying _hurt her, and I’ll kill you._ Satoshi just mocks Oreki, ever the clown. Chitanda, her delicately slender palm cradled in his, smiles and acknowledges their congratulations. In her smile, Oreki sees their road stretching far into the horizon. He just groans to no one in particular, realizing that they have many more mysteries ahead.

**Author's Note:**

> I love how Oreki and Chitanda are so incredibly awkward around each other at times, canonically. It gives you the feeling that they're just regular teenagers struggling to understand friendship and romance, not omniscient characters in some harem anime.
> 
> I haven't watched Hyouka in ages, so I sorta forgot which honorifics they use to refer to each other. Mainly guesswork. Meh.


End file.
